Chapter 1

"That one looks like she will show some sport, eh Alexander. Let's see how far she gets."

As the two men watched from the sheltering smoke enveloping the looted shell of what had been the town's largest house, a young woman, clad in fashionably tight jeans and an expensive- and torn- T-shirt, bolted from the front door of the adjoining house into the street like the hunted animal she was. Her lithe, leggy figure seemed to fly deerlike across the cobblestones on her Nike running shoes She crossed the cobblestone street and had almost reached the beckoning alley when she made the mistake of breaking stride to look back. That was when the swiftest of her pursuers caught her, throwing away his automatic rifle to make a diving tackle. In seconds, three other uniformed men had reached the struggling pair. One of these grabbed her arms, holding them above her head, as the oldest man, their Sergeant, used his large knife to cut away the already torn T-shirt, slicing through the now soiled white of the shirt to expose her white lace bra. The bra disappeared next with a flick of his knife. Her Levi's required a longer struggle before the knife had them in shreds. The young woman, a pretty, short haired brunette of perhaps twenty, was left naked, brutally stripped of her clothing except for her Nikes. Nude, she displayed a slim, well formed body just reaching womanhood, her skin pale and translucent like the finest porcelain. The terrified girl was roughly forced onto her back as the men prepared to rape her under the terse directions of their Sergeant. One man stood by her head, his booted feet pinning her slender arms to the cold cobblestones as two of his companions grabbed her feet and forced open her long, shapely legs to display her shaven vagina. The trapped girl screamed frantically, her small breasts shaking enticingly as she struggled madly to free an arm or a leg. A constant "NO!" streamed out of her mouth as if she thought that words would protect her any more than the possession of the right clothes had protected her. Few words were exchanged between the men as they pinned the girl for the coming rape; they worked with an economy of words and motion born of frequent practice. There in the street, held spread eagle on the cold, muddy cobblestones, the trembling girl- silent now- waited to be raped. Above her the bearded, grinning Sergeant took his time shedding his weapon and web gear; he enjoyed the sight of the woman's fear and meant to prolong this moment. Despite the muttered urgings of his men to get on with it so they could have their turn, he lingered to play with the terrified girl. Opening his fly, he exposed his erect cock to the shaking, crying girl, telling her that soon she would find out what it felt like to be fucked by a real man... by a Serb.

"GOD DAMN IT ZLATKO, YOU'RE SO SLOW IT WOULD SHAME THE DEVIL! FUCK THE BITCH! BUT KEEP HER TO TAKE BACK TO THE HOTEL.

The Sergeant looked up in surprise at the words. It took his eyes a second to find the source of the voice in the smoke coming from the burning houses. Then he saw the tall, bearded figure clad in a pressed camouflage uniform standing with his smaller bodyguard by the corner of the burning building. As always, the sight of the man's cruel smile sent a jolt of fear through the Sergeant's usually dead emotions.

"ARKAN!"

"Fuck her, Zlatko! Do the little Moslem piglet. NOW!"

The Sergeant obeyed. He ordered his men to spread her legs more, painfully stretching them until her long, slim legs were almost parallel with her hips. Then, turning his fear of Arkan into a rage directed at the helpless girl, he fell upon her, forcing his way into her, impaling her on his erect cock. Once he had penetrated inside her warm form, he supported himself upon his arms and concentrated all his weight behind his cock's thrusts, pounding into the captive girl as she screamed and cried beneath him. In a moment he could feel her open up, surrendering to his intimate invasion. He sank deeper into her, forgetting Arkan, forgetting even his cheering men, as he savored the tight warmth of her vagina, slick with her warm blood. The bearded Sergeant locked eyes with the girl- stared down into her wide open, pain ridden eyes- as he rode her. He wanted to see her face as he emptied himself into her, planted a Serb's seed in her belly. It took only seconds for him to reach that point; as he shot into her womb, the Sergeant stared into her open anguished eyes and laughed into her horrified face. Then he mockingly kissed her tear streaked cheek and rolled off her trembling nude body.

The man the Sergeant had called Arkan watched the rape with obvious pleasure. He was the leader of this uniformed gang of which the four rapists were a small part. His name was Zelijko Aleksico, though he was better known by his nom de guerre, Arkan. Tall, heavy set, and with a full, black beard, he was the perfect image of the mountain hajduk, the traditional folk hero bandit from the centuries long wars with the hated Turkish occupier. But he was no simple mountain man Born a scion of the old Communist elite of Yugoslav, he had been what was then called an "economic criminal", a business suited blackmarketer, successful enough to be able to buy tolerance under the old Communist regime until he had killed a policeman in a fit of anger. Then, calling himself a political refugee, Arkan had spent the next 3 years in the Serb emigrant communities of western Europe and the United States where he was still wanted for questioning about a rape-murder. Now, calling himself a Defender of Serbia, Arkan was the terror of northern Bosnia. With the break-up of Yugoslavia, he had returned home to find his special talents in demand. Under the patronage of the secret police chief in Belgrade, he had been encouraged to form a private army. Using his criminal connections, Arkan had recruited members of the Serbian underworld to play an important role in Belgrade's war plan. In the ethnic war against the Croats and the Moslem Bosnians, these men were the cutting edge of the effort to terrorize the non-Serbian populations into abandoning their homes. In return for carrying out Belgrade's policy of ethnic cleansing, Arkan was allowed to take whatever he wished from the refugees. Cars, money, TV's, VCR's, jewelry, household appliances, kitchen sinks, even copper wiring were all carted away by his men to be sold in Belgrade or smuggled out of the country. Arkan's share of the loot had already made him one of the richest men in Serbia. He and his men also took women, both for their own pleasure and as a calculated method of terrorizing their traditional Moslem and Croat enemies. In the Balkans, rape was a weapon of war; it was a weapon for which Arkan had a particular passion. It was a passion which Arkan enjoyed indulging both personally and vicariously. At the moment he was content to vicariously enjoy the young Moslem girl's rape. As the now sated Sergeant withdrew, one of the men holding the girl's legs took his place. Arkan watched as this man rutted atop the young short haired girl, covering her slender body with his own bulk as he ground himself against her so that only the girl's fine featured, boyish face was still visible. For now Arkan was content to savor the pain and humiliation on that face from a distance. He would, Arkan knew, have ample opportunity to inflict his own tortures upon the young girl. For Arkan operated one of the most notorious of the Serbian rape camps in a hotel he had commandeered from its Croatian owner, a rape camp which he kept full of captured Croat and Moslem women even now despite the so called peace accord. The camp and its women were in Arkan's mind the most satisfying of the rewards the war had brought, better by far than the wealth the war had brought him. For Arkan the war had brought liberation from the shackles of conventional society. He no longer had to hide his passion for rape and mayhem; now he could be proud of it. For like today's rape of this filthy Turski neprijatelj, everything he did, he did for Serbia, as a Serb patriot fulfilling a centuries old mission of vengeance.

Arkan was so proud of his deeds that he recorded his trail of blood and tears for posterity. He had as one of his hangers-on a young man who before the war had been studying the cinema. Equipped with a video camera that had once belonged to an overly curious BBC stringer, it was Demrtri's job to record the great things Arkan was doing for his country. It would, Demrtri repeatedly told his leader, make a great movie. At the moment, he was busy filming the girl's rape, moving toward the girl for a close up of her terror filled face. The cameraman saw in her rape great art; in his mind it was the perfect metaphor for Arkan's assault upon this nameless little village. It will be great cinema, he thought as he filmed the rape; it will be a visual assault on the senses worthy of a scene from his favorite movie, Sergio Garone's masterpiece " Camp 5: a Hell for Women".

As the second man rolled off the naked girl, the cameraman panned down her body. Starting at her tear streaked face, he moved the camera down her bruised torso- the delicate skin of her breasts disfigured by red bruises from the rough hands of her attackers- to her bare sex. He focused the camera on the girl's red, exposed slit, the now gapping cunt lips covered with the cum of her attackers. The shot ended prematurely as the third man took her, throwing the legs of the now unresisting young woman over his shoulders and lifting her ass off the ground. Positioning her with only her shoulders resting on the cold stones, he proceeded to pound his cock into her, hammering his way into her womb. The camera lovingly captured the feral expression on the man's face as he raped the Moslem girl, an expression which was an equal mixture of anger and happiness in another's suffering. Demrtri panned alternatively from the man's face to the girl's, juxtaposing their emotions. Her pain vied with his pleasure; her humiliation vied with his shameful joy in her suffering. This was, for the cameraman, true cinema; no actors could duplicate this. It was real. Stepping back, he opened the shot to include the stern figure of Arkan set against the smoke and flames pouring from the looted house behind him, showing him watching over the Moslem girl's rape like some ancient Serbian god of vengeance! He returned to the girl as the fourth and final man mounted her, rode her brutally, and then spent himself inside her, faithfully recording every move as he had so often done in the past. These men were his usual subjects, members of Arkan's private militia, the men Arkan called his Tigers. Officially they were the 11th Special Forces Brigade of the rump army of the Krajina Serb Republic. But the ":Special" in their title had nothing to do with any military skills. They were ethnic cleansers rather than combat soldiers. They "fought" the unarmed, the civilians, the helpless in Belgrade's ethnic war. They did the jobs too dehumanizing for the soldiers of the makeshift Bosnian Serb Army. Jobs like this one. And he was their chronicler, their Homer.

For the one hundredth time, Navy Lieutenant (j.g.) Bobbie Malone looked at her pilot calmly reading a magazine and wondered, "How does she do it?". This was a common enough thought for Bobbie to entertain about her pilot and mentor, Lieutenant Diedra Volksrye, A.K.A. "the Valkyrie" to everyone in their F-14 squadron. The older woman was everything Bobbie wished that she was- big, confident, and one of the boys. But right now, what Bobbie was wondering was how she stood the smell. She knew that the U.S. Navy had been feeding its sailors boiled eggs and baked beans for Sunday breakfast since John Paul Jones. It was a tradition. She just didn't understand why. She thought that they would have figured out by now that such a combination produces enough flatulence, what her male squadron mates so quaintly called Sunday farts, to make this carrier, the U.S.S Eisenhower, uninhabitable for normal people. Spending her Sundays cooped up in a ready room ripe with the smell of breakfast and half washed male bodies was not what she had in mind when she signed up for Naval ROTC 5 long years ago. Exactly what, she wondered, had been my reason for signing up- the white uniforms maybe?

Her digression into ancient history ended as the squadron operations officer for VF-142 entered the ready room and called for their attention.

"Good news Gentlemen... and ladies. We have a Mission! "

Even Bobbie was happy to hear that they finally had something to break the monotony of cruising up and down off the Bosnian coast and waiting. For once, the room's aroma was forgotten.

" We know that Serbian forces of the so-called Republic of Serb Krajina are preparing to attack a small Bosnian village near the key town of Brcko, located here on the Sava River. These people are pretty much the loose cannon these days. With the withdrawal of U.S. troops back into their camps, the Krajina Serbs have been attempting to expand their area of influence to the south by taking on Croat and now Bosnian Moslem forces. The good news is that they are not thought- I stress the word thought- to have any antiaircraft weapons beyond the SA-7 shoulder fired missile and some 20mm guns. You should be safe as long as you maintain at least 15,000 feet altitude above ground level. We have been given the mission of "deterring" the Serb attack. We are to do this by flying a photo recon mission over the fighting. No bombs; just pictures. Washington wants us to remind the Serbs that we are watching, but they don't want to hurt anybody! It is possible that the photos will be used to plan a later strike, though just between us I won't count on it. Valkyrie, since you're TARPS qualified, you'll fly the recon pod; Gumby and Goose will fly escort. You are to let them get a good look at you as you do the flyover; remind them that we are still here. Just don't go below 15,000 feet and use lots of flare countermeasures; those shoulder launched SAMS can spoil your whole day! The takeoff time is 1440 local. Brief-back is at 1340 so you'll have two hours to plan. Here is the target folder. Bad news folks. No air-to -ground munitions will be carried on this mission. Air-to -ground now requires the CINC's approval to even load. You get shot at; just grin and bear it. You will have ARM and air-to -air. You still have the ability to use either at first warning of hostile intent by a radar or - we should be so lucky- an aerial target. Any questions... OK, see you in two hours."

As the three named pilots crowded around the table, Bobbie stood back. Her job was radar-intercept officer, operating the F-14's powerful radar which was used to track other aircraft. But since the various sides in this nasty war lacked the aircraft necessary to challenge the NATO air patrols, she really had nothing to do except tag along in the backseat and watch. Valkyrie would plan the flight, Bobbie decided; she didn't need the help of a "nugget", a rookie on her first cruise.

" Fuck!", Valkyrie exclaimed as she studied the map, " What fuckin staff wennie wrote this? We gotta fly down a valley- under the cloud cover- so we'll be right at or below 15,000... and us with nothing to shoot back with! To take a bunch of pictures nobody will ever look at. This is ridiculous! Look at the approach here. It looks like we have to come in from the west in order to overfly the village."

The village in question had drawn Arkan's attention simply by being located at the foot of a hill which overlooked the town of Brcko, the real prize. Brcko itself was large for this area of Bosnia, approximately 100 mostly stone buildings set along the road and the river which traversed the valley together, as well as strategically located. It had changed hands several times during the war, most recently when it was given back to the Bosnian Moslem side at the American sponsored Dayton "Peace" Accord. With possession of the village and its heights, Arkan's Serbs would be in a position to retake Brcko whenever they wished by merely positioning their rudimentary artillery on the heights. This was the pattern of warfare in the Balkans- hold the high ground, and you hold the town. The populated areas were always in the fertile valleys, and there were always too many hills overlooking the towns to be adequately defended with the scant resources available. The attacking side had only to occupy one of the heights from which they could bring the town under fire from heavy weapons firing over open sights into the dwellings, leaving the defenders the choice of surrender or facing a slow house by house destruction. It was a war fought using the tactics of the 18th century with the cast off weapons of the 20th century. On the heights above Brcko, Arkan was already moving to place his "artillery", a single 85mm antitank gun. That one gun was quite capable of destroying the entire town house by house from its hilltop perch safely out of range of the defenders' small arms. Only a similar gun, which the defenders did not possess, or the intervention of American airpower could save the town once Arkan began the bombardment.

Arkan had chosen this set of heights for his gun because of the weakness of the village which controlled access to it. The 50 or 60 residents of the village had trusted to the peace accords and the now departed American garrison at nearby Brcko for their security. They numbered only a few armed men among the mostly related families living there, ex-soldiers of the Moslem militia who had kept their guns when they returned home. These men had been able to do nothing against the sudden attack of the camouflage uniformed Serbs. Appearing at dawn to surround the village, the Serbs had called for the village's men to surrender, threatening that they would throw grenades into the houses if the men did not comply. Hopelessly outnumbered and frantic to save their families, the men had complied, only to be herded away for eventual execution. Once all possibility of resistance had disappeared, Arkan's Tigers poured into the houses to loot as well as rape whoever was unlucky enough to catch their fancy among the frightened women and children. When they finished, the village would be put to the torch to ensure that no one- however foolhardy- could come back, leaving an empty, burned out shell where a village had stood for hundreds of years. It was not easy work. The Serbian irregulars had prepared themselves for their task in the usual manner-by drinking great quantities of slivovitz, the local plum brandy. Even men such as these- men who were experienced in the savagery of Balkan's warfare - needed to numb the mind and soul before they did their patriotic duty.

A little over two hours later, Bobbie was strapped into the rear seat of Valkyrie's F-14A+ as it moved toward Bosnia at a leisurely 425 knots. Bobbie was always amazed at the age of the Navy's fleet of F-14's; this one had been built the same year she was born, making it 23 years old. With only fuel, a pair of sidewinder air-to -air missiles under its wings, and the bulky TARPS pod with its three cameras under its belly between the twin engines, the plane felt unusually quick and maneuverable under Valkyrie's sensitive touch. Bobbie could tell that Valkyrie was nervous about this flight since she had brought along her Walkman and her lucky Wagner tape and was playing it - thankfully at a low volume- over the intercom. The sound of the tape made Bobbie think of the stories that she had heard of Valkyrie's first month in the squadron. Valkyrie had been the first, and only, woman assigned to the squadron when she arrived a year ago. To say she was unwelcome would be an understatement. The squadron wit took one look at her Germanic name, her blonde hair, and her 6' muscular build and dubbed her " theValkyrie". The name stuck since it fitted her " don't fuck with me, I'm bulletproof" attitude. For a joke, one male flyer got a tape of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" and played it one day when she entered the ready room. She loved it;

Valkyrie bought a recording of Wagner's entire 4 hour opera and began playing it constantly, much to the annoyance of her squadron mates. Compared to Bobbie's inability to gain acceptance in the squadron even after two months, it had taken Valkyrie less than a week to make her mark in the unit. One night she appeared in the officers' club to meet her date, a F-14 driver from another squadron. Valkyrie had been wearing her party clothes: a black leather miniskirt, black high heels, black fishnet stockings, and a black blazer with nothing apparently underneath the blazer but her. One of the men from her squadron, who had a little too much to drink, tried to hit on her. When she ignored him, he put his hand on her ass to get her attention. What he got was a hard blow to the chest with her elbow, followed by Valkyrie grabbing him by his gonads. Then she lifted him up on his tiptoes as she said, " You didn't say, may I?" Bobbie knew that Valkyrie lifted weights and could easily believe she could have picked the man up by his privates if she had wanted to. As she held him on his tip toes, she smiled and said, "Ask nice and maybe I'll grant you a wish. What do you wish for, numbnuts?" Bobbie had heard that the male pilot didn't hesitate. " Ughh, I'de like my balls back, please ma'am... Lieutenant... Valkyrie?, ", he croaked. After that, she had been one of the boys; proof that her philosophy of " Grab em by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow" did indeed work, at least on aviators. Bobbie figured that all Valkyrie's macho stuff was part of the image which she had chosen for herself; that Valkyrie really bought into the whole female Tom Cruise- Top Gun idea. Bobbie also figured that Valkyrie told her that story because Bobbie had been having trouble being taken seriously by the male pilots. She wished she could be more like Valkyrie. Still, Bobbie simply could not imagine herself doing anything physical like that. She didn't think of herself as a whimp- after all she stood 5' 6" with an athletic body from four years of college sports. She had always been proud of her body. That is, until she joined the Navy and found herself surrounded by 6 foot plus flyers. Now she felt like a Lilliputian, and it was beginning to depress her. Bobbie was not even sure any more that she had what it took to be a Navy flyer. She was cute, not macho. That is not, she knew, a good thing to be in a Navy fighter squadron. When she had reported in two months ago as the second woman in the squadron, the squadron leader had taken one look at her and told Valkyrie to take her under her wing. She had heard him say to Valkyrie that Bobbie reminded him of a deer caught in the headlights of a Mack truck. That was, Bobbie knew, depressingly accurate. Valkyrie had done just as he ask, becoming a mentor, taskmaster, and big sister to Bobbie. She had even managed to stop the other pilots when they tried to hang the callsign "Bambi" on Bobbie. Bobbie found that life under Valkyrie's wing was at least tolerable. A month later to Bobbie's intense discomfort, her life became even more complex. She and Valkyrie became famous to the intense and unconcealed envy of the male flyers. A Newsweek reporter visiting the carrier had written them up as the "beautiful, but deadly duo" in a feature article. Now they were one of the must see features of the ship, trotted out for every visiting media hound and VIP tour that came to the Eisenhower, leaving the male pilots seething. Bobbie hated the whole thing. Valkyrie on the other hand loved the attention. She had a true fighter pilot's ego. Valkyrie even had her set speech which she used on each gap jawed interviewer when they ask the inevitable question about how she felt about combat. Valkyrie would smile and start about how her fangs were just as long as a man's and how she was just as tough. She was the one who did the talking while Bobbie kept quiet, content to bask in the older woman's reflected confidence. Bobbie found that she liked being the sidekick; she liked having someone else take charge of things.

There was just one thing wrong with their relationship. Bobbie was beginning to fall in love with Valkyrie. Bobbie was uncomfortable with this growing attraction; she had never had or wished to have a sexual relationship with a woman. But she could no longer deny her desire for Valkyrie. Being bunked together did not help. Bobbie was constantly and uncomfortably aware of Valkyrie's muscular but feminine body, so close yet impossible to touch. For, as she knew, Valkyrie was aggressively heterosexual. Anything male that was tall, reasonably good-looking, and not assigned to VF-142 was fair game for her trophy collection. One night Bobbie had returned unexpectedly to the quarters they had shared ashore to find Valkyrie having sex with a man. She had been embarrassed but could not look away. From the half open door Bobbie watched Valkyrie's sweaty, muscular, heavy breasted body in action as she sat astride the reclining man. She watched as Valkyrie rode him, her hair flying, grunting and moaning as the man roughly milked her breasts while she fucked him. Valkyrie made love with the same intensity that she threw into her flying. She watched the two fuck, oblivious to their surroundings, until the man appeared to come. Although Bobbie knew that Valkyrie must have had at least one orgasm as she watched, she saw that her pilot was still unsatisfied. As she watched in amazement, Valkyrie moved forward to mount the man's face with her cum dripping pussy. Despite the man's muffled protests, Valkyrie covered his face with her dripping pussy and begun riding it as she yelled at him to "finish it". At that point, Bobbie closed the door and withdrew, her knees weak with desire. Since then, the image of Valkyrie's sweaty body had haunted her awake and asleep, though in her mind's eye it was her face that Bobbie saw buried in Valkyrie's pussy, not the man's. That image always made her pussy dripping wet, just as it was doing now.